Arthur W Upfield is best known to aficionados of crime detection stories as the creator of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) of the Queensland Police Service who features in 29 novels. They were written between 1927 and 1966, and most are set in outback Australia. Kees de Hoog has been researching Upfield's life and works since 2001. He authors this blog to publish his views and findings, and to provide news of developments in this area.

20 October 2011

When Arthur Upfield passed away in 1964, in his archive was “an octavo notebook, lacking the front cover, held together with a brass pin ... similar in size and style to a policemen’s notebook”. It contains a “[manuscript] transcript (handwritten) by Arthur Upfield of an article about a murder committed near Mansfield, published in [t]he [A]rgus Thursday, 28th Feb. 1918.” (Notes to “A bush tragedy [bmanuscript]: headless body found: murder a possibility”, Melbourne University Library Catalogue.)

The notebook actually contains handwritten copies of eleven articles published in the Argus (Melbourne) newspaper from 28 February to 16 November 1918 about two murders it called the “Mount Howitt Tragedy”. I subsequently found another five Argus articles about it published in March 1918.

The sixteen articles report the discovery and the subsequent police investigations of the murders in 1918 of James Barclay, the manager of Wonnangatta Station in the East Gippsland highlands of Victoria, and his cook, John Balmford. Now known as the Wonnangatta mystery, it has never been solved. For more details an easy place to start is this Wikipedia page, which has references to many of the books written about it over the years.

When I first saw the catalogue entry in 2005, I misread it as meaning that Upfield had actually written the article, but that seemed most unlikely as he was in England with the Australian Imperial Force for the First World War at that time.

It also occurred to me that he may have found and kept the article with a view to using it as the basis for a story or a novel.

The answer is in a letter of 29 June 1934 to Charles Lemon in which Upfield wrote:

For a Sydney publisher who is bringing out a library of sixpenny booklets on the style of the American Blue Book, I have written one on Snowy Rowles and a corker on what was known as the Mount Howitt tragedy which was never cleared up back in 1918.

The booklet on Snowy Rowles is clearly The Murchison Murders by Arthur Upfield (Sydney: Midget Masterpieces Publishing, 1934), so the Sydney publisher would have been Bernard Cronin who died in 1968. His archives are in the National Library of Australia but do not include the manuscript.

In the The History of Wannangatta Station, Wallace Mortimer says one possible motive for Barlay’s murder came from a novelist “who had obviously done little or no research into the matter” (Richmond, Vic.: Spectrum Publications, 1980, 121). Mortimer, who was born in 1927, told me late in 2010 that the novelist was definitely not Arthur Upfield but a journalist.

A book called Who Killed Jim Barclay? by Wallace Mortimer was published in 2009 (Milawa, Vic: Wallace Mortimer). In it he claims to reveal “the killers, plural”. He may have solved the Wonnangatta mystery, but the whereabouts of Upfield’s manuscript, if it still exists, remains an unsolved mystery.

18 October 2011

The “Boney” TV series made in 1971 was inspired by Arthur Upfield's famous Bony crime detection novels set in the Australian outback. Yet despite worldwide acclaim it has never been shown in the United States.

This new edition of Roger Mitchell's book about the TV series is a brilliantly researched and beautifully illustrated PDF file that can be viewed on a computer - PC and Mac. It tells the fascinating stories of how Upfield created his half Aboriginal - half European Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, and how the Boney TV show was planned and filmed. It has new interviews with the producer, directors and controversial star - James Laurenson - and exclusive behind-the-scenes photos. It also contains articles on each Boney episode, biographies of the show's creators, details of the company’s other series, a Press section, an overview of each Bony novel.

The files are on a disc that can be read on a PC or Mac computer screen. Instructions in Word are included on the disc.

Email frayncd@hotmail.com if you have a question, or to simply get a copy for US$20.00 with free shipping. Pay by cash or credit through Paypal (account name is vzd963@hotmail.com).

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About Me

I have always enjoyed mystery stories starting with Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's stories. I had read most of the Bony books when, looking for an interest outside of work, I decided in 2001 to delve further into the works of an author. It made sense to choose an Australian author, and from that point Upfield virtually chose himself.
When I started this blog in December 2010 I had collected and published with Lulu.com three volumes of short stories and other short works by Upfield, a chronology of Bony's life and career, and a homage to the Bony novels. Further details can be found in my online Arthur Upfield Bookshop at www.lulu.com/kdehoog.